What A Character!

Do you like characters that are larger than life?

If so, perhaps this is why reading novels is so rewarding. We experience how our heroes react to their interesting and sometimes dangerous lives from the safety of our own armchairs.

When they show us their dark side we secretly identify with them, and when they try to overcome their conflicts and learn from them, our inner hero soars to heady hights with them. Sounds a bit like life doesn’t it?

I always think that reading a good novel is like living someone else’s life vicariously. If the writing is good, we are pulled into it with all our senses; we live it as though it’s real.

It’s not really real though is it? Or perhaps it’s only as real as we want it to be. We can certainly learn from our hero’s journey as though it has really happened, and in a sense it has.

Many writers say that once their characters have taken shape, they completely take over and virtually dictate the story themselves, which is a great place to be if you are a writer.

With the end in sight for research on my follow-up novel, I wanted to develop my characters and I thought I would try something different – I would interview them.

This of course is a leap into the mysteries of Consciousness – something that I looove!

I’ve practised meditation for over thirty years and this practice gives you a bit of an edge when it comes to intuition, imagination and creativity.

I started with Ajax, the father of my hero Alejandro in my first novel, and I’ve realised his place in the next is very important.

It’s the strangest thing to type a question to a character in your head, and get an immediate response that you didn’t expect!

When I asked him what was the first thing he thought of when he woke up in the morning, he replied:

‘The sky. The sky always represents the emotions, thoughts, and turmoils of humanity and other lifeforms, therefore I must know by looking as soon as the dawn calls, to see the state of play of the world.’